The McChrystal Show For Rubes And Warmongers

www.washingtonpost.com...

Much of McChrystal’s career has been spent in the military’s secretive Special Operations community, which rarely deals with the media and often views outsiders, even those within the military, with suspicion. Some of the most damaging statements in the Rolling Stone article were from his staff officers, who are also drawn heavily from the Special Operations community.

www.nytimes.com...

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, joined by his powerful half brother and other influential political figures, mounted a full-court press on behalf of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal on Wednesday, warning that Afghanistan could not afford a change in Western military leadership now.

www.nytimes.com...

Numerous reports link Ahmed Wali Karzai [the powerful half brother noted above] to the drug trade, according to current and former officials from the White House, the State Department and the United States Embassy in Afghanistan, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity. In meetings with President Karzai, including a 2006 session with the United States ambassador, the Central Intelligence Agency’s station chief and their British counterparts, American officials have talked about the allegations in hopes that the president might move his brother out of the country, said several people who took part in or were briefed on the talks.

www.nytimes.com...

KABUL, Afghanistan — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

www.google.com...

WASHINGTON — More than a year after the CIA's inspector general stepped down, frustrated members of Congress are urging the White House to fill the internal watchdog position that was central in uncovering abuses inside the spy agency.

"I am disturbed that it has not been filled up to this point," said Fred Hitz, who served as the CIA inspector general for eight years until 1998. "I am wondering what is going on."

www.rawa.org...

The U.S. has been in Afghanistan for over seven years, has spent $177 billion in that country alone, and has the most powerful and technologically advanced military on Earth. GPS tracking devices can locate any spot imaginable by simply pushing a few buttons.

Still, bumper crops [of poppies] keep flourishing year after year, even though heroin production is a laborious, intricate process. The poppies must be planted, grown and harvested; then after the morphine is extracted it has to be cooked, refined, packaged into bricks and transported from rural locales across national borders. To make heroin from morphine requires another 12-14 hours of laborious chemical reactions. Thousands of people are involved, yet—despite the massive resources at our disposal—heroin keeps flowing at record levels.

Common sense suggests that such prolific trade over an extended period of time is no accident, especially when the history of what has transpired in that region is considered. While the CIA ran its operations during the Vietnam War, the Golden Triangle supplied the world with most of its heroin. After that war ended in 1975, an intriguing event took place in 1979 when Zbigniew Brzezinski covertly manipulated the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan.Behind the scenes, the CIA, along with Pakistan’s ISI, were secretly funding Afghanistan’s mujahideen to fight their Russian foes. Prior to this war, opium production in Afghanistan was minimal. But according to historian Alfred McCoy, an expert on the subject, a shift in focus took place. “Within two years of the onslaught of the CIA operation in Afghanistan, the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world’s top heroin producer.”

www.thenation.com...

On October 29, 2001, while the Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan was under assault, the regime’s ambassador in Islamabad gave a chaotic press conference in front of several dozen reporters sitting on the grass. On the Taliban diplomat’s right sat his interpreter, Ahmad Rateb Popal, a man with an imposing presence. Like the ambassador, Popal wore a black turban, and he had a huge bushy beard. He had a black patch over his right eye socket, a prosthetic left arm and a deformed right hand, the result of injuries from an explosives mishap during an old operation against the Soviets in Kabul.

But Popal was more than just a former mujahedeen. In 1988, a year before the Soviets fled Afghanistan, Popal had been charged in the United States with conspiring to import more than a kilo of heroin. Court records show he was released from prison in 1997.

Flash forward to 2009, and Afghanistan is ruled by Popal’s cousin President Hamid Karzai. Popal has cut his huge beard down to a neatly trimmed one and has become an immensely wealthy businessman, along with his brother Rashid Popal, who in a separate case pleaded guilty to a heroin charge in 1996 in Brooklyn. The Popal brothers control the huge Watan Group in Afghanistan, a consortium engaged in telecommunications, logistics and, most important, security. Watan Risk Management, the Popals’ private military arm, is one of the few dozen private security companies in Afghanistan. One of Watan’s enterprises, key to the war effort, is protecting convoys of Afghan trucks heading from Kabul to Kandahar, carrying American supplies.

Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex-military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahedeen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort.

In this grotesque carnival, the US military’s contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban. “It’s a big part of their income,” one of the top Afghan government security officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts–hundreds of millions of dollars–consists of payments to insurgents.

McChrystal and his entire staff are engaged in a CIA backed drug operation. This is all out in the open. Its ridiculous to think that a special operator like McChrystal just happened to be put in charge of overseeing Afghanistan. He's working hand in hand with the CIA to ship those drugs into America. He has to be.

The White House is knee deep in this as is evidenced by Obama’s appointment to head the CIA, who also sits on the board of the NYSE. Leon Panetta was called in because the major commercial banks are involved in the laundering operation. We are talking several hundred billion a year in US dollars here. That kind of money requires commercial banking involvement. - Possibly the Fed's involvement as well, which is why they are so fearful of an audit.

We have narco-terrorists running our military and our country.

Everything put out by the press over this “confrontation” between McChrystal and Obama is lie. There is no confrontation. These people are cold and calculating. Everything has a purpose.

My guess is McChrystal and Obama have a long history together. McChrystal probably knows Obama from his days working as foreign intelligence asset for the CIA.


There is only one politician willing to speak up about it...

Guess who?




[edit on 23-6-2010 by mnemeth1]

Let me tell you how a real war would be fought if we were actually trying to "win" in Afghanistan:


Any "real" military general's first priority in Afghanistan would be eradicating the shipment of opiates and the destruction of the poppy crops.

They would be spraying those crops down to nothing.

In any real war, the priority targets are the means of wealth production for your enemy. If they don't have money, they can't fund their war effort.

The next order of business would be securing all supply routes in and out of that country. This would shut down the ability to move drugs out even if they were managed to be produced.

This would also conjunct with the construction of massive prison camps which would house any suspected drug producer or distributor. The US should have piles of farmers locked up right now, along with any suspected insurgents or people who have provided aid to the Taliban.

On top of this action, the military would seek and destroy any production facilities making or producing weapons for the Taliban, no matter where they may be or who may own them.

"Winning" in Afghanistan necessarily means winning the narco-war.

Of course, this is why I am for drug legalization. Since winning a narco-war is next to impossible. However our criminal government isn't even trying. They are in bed with the drug kingpins and our intelligence communities are funding their operations through those drugs. It is a self-perpetuating cycle.

Winning the drug war means the CIA loses its black ops funding.

reply to post by mnemeth1


You could not have said it better and I totally agree.

Maybe now that they have found a trillion worth of minerals/gems in Afghanistan they can start switching over from drugs to mining

Just a thought.

reply to post by LOLZebra


Why do just one?

We went into Afghanistan for two specific purposes:

1. To produce heroine for the US commercial banking industry, which is being entirely propped up by the illicit drug profits and laundering right now.

2. To secure the oil pipeline to the Caspian Sea.

Common sense tells us that "securing" an oil pipeline to the Caspian in a war zone is impossible unless your enemy allows you to do it. A pipeline can not be secured.

There is only one way an "enemy" would allow you to have that pipeline, and that is if he's not really your enemy, but a partner.

The "original" Taliban that we are supposedly fighting now shut down all the opium production in Afghanistan - that was at the time when the CIA was running heroine out of the golden triangle.

The CIA decided to pack up shop and move operations to Afghanistan, where they kicked out the real Taliban in short order and created a fake army of insurgents to justify continued combat operations - which are really nothing more than a drug protection racket using the force of the US military.

The CIA staged 9/11 as a pretext to set all of this up.




[edit on 23-6-2010 by mnemeth1]

Obama Refuses Oversight Of CIA Operations
fascistsoup.com...

NATO to Russia: We Like Drugs
fascistsoup.com...

Obama To Dems: You Are Too Dumb To Have Intelligence
fascistsoup.com...

More CIA Drug Smuggling Goodness
fascistsoup.com...

More CIA Love – Iran Contra Drugs
fascistsoup.com...

etc.. etc.. etc...



Of course former Bush daddy was the narco-kingpin head of the CIA then went on to become VP and finally president during all of this.

Clinton was involved heavily in the drug trade as well.

We have to assume Bush senior's son is involved, and Obama's totally obscure history is the result of his working as a foreign intelligence asset for the CIA.








[edit on 23-6-2010 by mnemeth1]

Did you call catch that in the OP?

Was it clear enough for you?

You have known narco-kingpin demanding McChrystal be kept in charge of operations there.

We all know the CIA is heavy into drug running and that the Afghanistan op is a huge lie in order to secure poppy fields in that area which is where the majority of the world's supply of heroin and opium related drugs come from. My question is though is where are these drugs being sold? I don't think they're necessarily being sold on the streets in America, or at least no more than usual. I've seen a fair bit of that side and heroin really isn't popular. Opium addicts are getting their kicks off of free-basing perscription drugs (which are essentially the same thing as heroin... thanks pharma industry for making heroin cheap and easy to get for kids) so where is all that product going? Maybe it's an east coast thing as I'm out here on the West Coast. Historically the Italian Mafia has always run golden triangle product and we've seen time and time again that the elements of the government and mafia are in bed together. However, I'm not understanding where the product is going from Afghanistan.

Most of the drugs in the US come from Mexican and South American cartels. Except marijuana which comes mainly from homegrown American growers and Vietnamese gangs.

[edit on 23-6-2010 by ATSCensorsMe]

reply to post by ATSCensorsMe


Of course they are being sold in the streets of America.

Why do you think our borders have more holes in them than block of swiss cheese?

This is about drugs.

They want them here.

reply to post by mnemeth1


You didn't read my post did you? I'm asking where the Afghani product is going. Yeah the streets are infested with drugs but on the west coast there's rarely any Afghani product. I'm trying to figure out where it's getting distributed to so I can follow the money trail. I'm guessing Eastern Europe?

And besides the borders have little to do with CIA drug running.



[edit on 23-6-2010 by ATSCensorsMe]

Hi everyone,

Stars and flags, even though most people who are aware, are of course aware of this stuff. John Pilger has lots of great journalistic stuff on the Golden Triangle of heroin production, heck, there are a thousand books on the subject if only folks are willing to look. I am way past the point of caring, I've known about this sort of thang for 12 years now, all we have are terrible, corrupt institutions who lie and say they are working for our benefit.

Just found this on google after 2 seconds of searching www.newstatesman.com...

In his new book, Empire's Workshop (Metropolitan Books), the American historian Greg Grandin describes the Salvador Option thus: "Once in office, [President] Reagan came down hard on central America, in effect letting his administration's most committed militarists set and execute policy. In El Salvador, they provided more than a million dollars a day to fund a lethal counter-insurgency campaign . . . All told, US allies in central America during Reagan's two terms killed over 300,000 people, tortured hundreds of thousands and drove millions into exile."

Although the Reagan administration spawned the current Bu#es, or "neo-cons", the pattern was set earlier. In Vietnam, death squads trained, armed and directed by the CIA murdered up to 50,000 people in Operation Phoenix. In the mid-1960s in Indonesia CIA officers compiled "death lists" for General Suharto's killing spree during his seizure of power. After the 2003 invasion, it was only a matter of time before this venerable "policy" was applied in Iraq.

How many millions of 'non-people' have to die before this is fixed?!? The CIA and factions of the US government and others are the real criminals of the world. It's not very easy to be a happy person when you open your eyes.

Peace

" It's not very easy to be a happy person when you open your eyes. "

dude, I so understand what you are saying.

you are not alone in feeling that way.

A hearty amen, and hear hear! You nailed it mnemeth1!

The military is a pawn for the criminal kingpins who have taken over the government and McChrystal is a known liar so this is all a dog and pony show for the American people who think we are over there punishing the Taliban for 9/11 even though it was supposedly Saudis who did it... Sigh

As Ron Paul said when asked how to end the wars; "just come home".

It looks like we now know who Obama is going to replace him with.

Gen. Petraeus

Petraeus got his doctorate from Princeton, a well known CIA recruiting ground. I have no proof that Petraeus is an actual man-of-the-cloth CIA operative, but I do know a few shady things about him:

www.cbsnews.com...

A secret military directive signed last September 30 by General David Petraeus, the Centcom commander, authorizes a vast expansion of secret U.S. military special ops from the Horn of Africa to the Middle East to Central Asia and “appears to authorize specific operations in Iran,” according to the New York Times.

www.nytimes.com...

The secret directive, signed in September by Gen. David H. Petraeus, authorizes the sending of American Special Operations troops to both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa to gather intelligence and build ties with local forces. Officials said the order also permits reconnaissance that could pave the way for possible military strikes in Iran if tensions over its nuclear ambitions escalate.

Officials said that many top commanders, General Petraeus among them, have advocated an expansive interpretation of the military’s role around the world, arguing that troops need to operate beyond Iraq and Afghanistan to better fight militant groups.

The order, which an official said was drafted in close coordination with Adm. Eric T. Olson, the officer in charge of the United States Special Operations Command, calls for clandestine activities that “cannot or will not be accomplished” by conventional military operations or “interagency activities,” a reference to American spy agencies.

let me reiterate that last point:

The order...calls for clandestine activities that “cannot or will not be accomplished” by conventional military operations or “interagency activities,” a reference to American spy agencies.

This guy wants para-military secret operations, outside of the conventional military and CIA.

If the conventional military and the CIA can't accomplish what he wants, what the hell kind of force is he talking about?

Roving bands of mercenary ninjas?

Obama, the peace president.


[edit on 23-6-2010 by mnemeth1]

Excellent thread Mnemeth! Worthy of the front page!

The Golden Triangle (carved up by the CIA for heroin production during Vietnam), Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan are the main producers of all of the world's heroin. There is even street slang for heroin from this region entitled "AIP" - Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan.

Would it be a leap to assume that the warmongering towards Iran is not only part of a long term geopolitical strategy based around oil, but a further attempt to corner the world's heroin market on behalf of international banksters?

And while we are partaking in the realm of speculation, would it also be wrong to suspect that the corruption from the CIA Middle East heroin trade leads up to the current POTUS? After all, Obama is known to have worked for the Business International Corporation in the 1980s, an corporation that is a known CIA front company with a certain leftist bent. This was only a year or so after Obama traveled to Pakistan, an act some have suspected on being on the behalf of the intelligence community.

[edit on 23-6-2010 by Someone336]

A little more on Petraeus from antiwar:

www.antiwar.com...

The real secret of Petraeus' "success" at counterinsurgency is payola. As commander of the 101st Airborne in Mosul, "he bought everybody off." The enemy "was just biding its time and building capacity, waiting him out." When Petraeus left Mosul, it went up for grabs. As top commander in Iraq, Petraeus bought everybody off again, making "a lot of deals with shady guys" who are "just laying low," so we can never leave, or the whole country will go up for grabs like Mosul did.

Odds are things will be worse if we leave than they were under Hussein, Ricks told NBC's Chris Matthews. Hussein was a toothless tyrant, but now that Petraeus has "armed everybody to the teeth" it's too dangerous to get out. We've made the Iraqi security forces strong enough that they might attempt a coup if we're not there to stop them. The surge may have averted a civil war, but one colonel tells Ricks he doesn't think "the Iraqi civil war has been fought yet," so we have to stick around so we don't miss all the fun. As Iraq becomes more secure, it moves backward. There's a "long-term trend toward increasing authoritarianism," so we have to stay in Iraq so things don't go back to the way they were under Hussein, even though, as Ricks just told us, things were better under Hussein than they are now.

Ricks says the surge is a strategic failure because it didn't bring about the unification government it was supposed to produce. But that's okay, because an analyst Ricks knows says "power-sharing is always a prelude to violence," so we have to stay in Iraq to make sure we don't achieve our strategic objective, which will be easy because "the whole notion of democracy and representative government in Iraq" was "absolutely ludicrous" from the get-go.

If you're thinking Petraeus was plotting all along to create a situation we couldn't extract ourselves from, you're right. As Ricks notes, Petraeus needed time "not to bring the war to a close, but simply to show enough genuine progress that the American people would be willing to stick with it even longer."

Recently the HuffPo did a piece saying Petraeus intentionally leaked a comment on providing information on Iraq troop draw-downs in order to undermine the President's pledge of pulling out in 16 months.

If you read between the lines, it becomes clear that Petraeus didn't make that leak without presidential authorization.

Obama has absolutely no intention of pulling out of Iraq.

Ever.

Just as he has no intention of pulling out of Afghanistan.

Ever.

Afghanistan is about drug money and oil pipelines.

Iraq was about stopping the sale of oil in Euros - as is Iran.

They can not allow the sale of oil outside of the dollar system.

The leak was also mentioned in the antiwar article I quoted, which also took a bite at the bait set out between the two. The object of the leak was to intentionally paint a picture of division between the generals who want more war and the president - but there is no conflict. All of these guys are on the same page.

One has to question the decision to remove McChrystal from command. I suspect his services are needed elsewhere. Look for McChrystal to show up on the board of AEI or the RAND corporation.



[edit on 23-6-2010 by mnemeth1]

CIA mouthpiece aka the WaPo writes:

www.washingtonpost.com...

McChrystal also played a key role in improving Kabul's rocky relationship with Islamabad. Karzai met with Pakistan's intelligence chief recently to discuss cooperation in negotiating with Afghan Taliban leaders.

Yet Petraeus probably has as much, if not more, clout in Islamabad. He was an early proponent of a regional strategy that prioritized improving relations with Pakistan in hopes of persuading it to target the Afghan Taliban fighters who use Pakistani hideouts to plot attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Petraeus made his first trip to Pakistan in November 2008, shortly after being appointed head of Central Command. He has visited several times since, delivering assurances that the U.S. troop buildup in Afghanistan would not spill over into Pakistan, visiting Pakistani paramilitary forces in the northwestern city of Peshawar and regularly praising Pakistan's fight against its domestic Taliban, an offshoot of the Afghan Taliban.

He visited most recently in May, for the sixth time in 12 months.

"There's a complete understanding of each other's situation," a senior Pakistani military official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because Pakistan had not yet offered an official reaction. "He's not a stranger."

Petraeus has no intention of convincing Pakistan's ISI to go after those Taliban. Him and the Paki ISI (which is a direct off-shoot of our own CIA) have every intention of continuing to fund those insurgent groups and allowing them to operate their with impunity.

Those insurgent groups answer directly to the Paki ISI.

india.foreignpolicyblogs.com...

Matt Waldman in a recently published Paper, “The Sun is in the Sky: the Relationship between Pakistan’s ISI and Afghan Insurgents” explores the extent of the ISI’s links and support to the problem of Afghan insurgency. Though Matt accepts that several endogenous factors are responsible for the emergence and sustenance of the Taliban, his interviews with insurgent field commanders in and around Kabul and Kandhar provide him with evidence to claim that the ISI orchestrates, sustains and strongly influences the movement. The research concentrates on two principal groups: the core Taliban movement lead by Mullah Omar and the Haqqani network led by Jalaluddin Haqqani. The Paper provides elaborate details of how the strategy, funding and operations of the two groups are dominated by ISI’s priorities and interests.

This whole war is a sham.

Its a lie.

Its an orchestrated stunt.


[edit on 23-6-2010 by mnemeth1]

reply to post by Someone336


A little follow up to my previous post regarding Obama and the CIA. A lot of people probably already know this info, but it is always good to reiterate.

Ann Dunham, Obama's allegedly leftist mother, married one Lolo Soetoro, a government relations consultant to Mobil and a key liaison between the oil giant and the bloody Suharto regime. Suharto, a bloody leader of a military dominant Indonesian government, was backed by the Central Intelligence Agency:

Suharto: Monster of the CIA and U.S. Empire

During this time Dunham was working for the Ford Foundation under Peter Geithner, the father of Obama's Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

The former Binghamton University professor of sociology, James Petras, and other critics accuse the Foundation of being a front organization for the CIA. Petras names the exchange of high-ranking personnel between the CIA and the Foundation, Ford Foundation's big donations to the CIA-front Congress for Cultural Freedom, the former Foundation president Richard Bissell's relationship with DCI Allen Dulles and involvement with the Marshall Plan during the 1950s, among other things. According to Petras, the Ford Foundation funds "anti-leftist human rights groups which focus on attacking human rights violations of U.S. adversaries".

Another American academic, Joan Roelofs, in "Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism" (State University of New York Press, 2003) argues that Ford and similar foundations play a key role in co-opting opposition movements: "While dissent from ruling class ideas is labeled 'extremism' and is isolated, individual dissenters may be welcomed and transformed. Indeed, ruling class hegemony is more durable if it is not rigid and narrow, but is able dynamically to incorporate emergent trends." She reports that John J. McCloy, while chairman of the Foundation's board of trustees from 1958 to 1965, "...thought of the Foundation as a quasi-extension of the U.S. government. It was his habit, for instance, to drop by the National Security Council (NSC) in Washington every couple of months and casually ask whether there were any overseas projects the NSC would like to see funded." Roelofs also charges that the Ford Foundation financed counter-insurgency programs in Indonesia and other countries.

The Ford Foundation

Ann Dunham would also work for the Ford Foundation in Pakistan, where Obama would visit in the summer of 1981, right when the CIA was conducting covert operations involving the funding of the Mujaheddin against Russia. During his time in Pakistan, Obama would be hosted by Muhammadmian Soomro, a later acting president of Pakistan. Quite the prominent individual for the average college student who is traveling abroad. Upon his return, Obama would go to work for the Business International Corporation, a known CIA front company that would pay for Obama's tuition debt from Columbia.

So...

Obama's mother works for an alleged CIA front company and marries a man who is a liaison between an oil company and a CIA backed dictator.

Obama travels to Pakistan, stays with a high ranking politician during a time of covert operations, returns and goes to work for a CIA front company.

The CIA's covert operations in this area establish a massive international heroin trade.

Fast forward... Obama continues to wage a war run by people still involved in said heroin trade.

If the shoe fits, Obama!

Great Post mnem!

this is a holy war. its all about GOD! (holy as in their story is FULL OF HOLES!)

Gold

Oil

Drugs

Once you open your eyes to the lies it becomes clear as day.

S&F

[edit on 6/23/2010 by ugie1028]

Here's the entire paper by Waldman:

The Sun in the Sky: The relationship between Pakistan’s ISI and Afghan insurgents
www.crisisstates.com...

Abstract

Many accounts of the Afghan conflict misapprehend the nature of the relationship between Pakistan’s security services and the insurgency. The relationship, in fact, goes far beyond contact and coexistence, with some assistance provided by elements within, or linked to,Pakistan’s intelligence service (ISI) or military.

reply to post by mnemeth1


Thanks for the heads up bud. S&F. I tell you I have nothing but hate in my heart anymore for the scum that runs our country. They are the biggest crime syndicate in the history of the world. They have stolen our country from us and have stolen our freedom and I'm sure murdured millions. It's sick....